Coast Starlight

Name Coast Starlight
Start Seattle
End Emeryville (CA)
Distance 671 miles
Duration 22 hours
Creation Created by Amtrak in 1971 as the first train to run the entire length of the West Coast!

August 17

Unfortunately, wildfires destroyed part of this route so the entire segment was canceled. We knew about this in advance, so we planned an extra night in Seattle, got plane tickets to Emeryville, and will spend a night in the Bay Area before hopping on the California Zephyr, the train I am most excited about!

We started off our extra day in Seattle by heading over to the University of Washington to check out the Burke Museum of Natural History. The exhibits far exceeded our expectations with floors on Native art, biology & ecology, and paleontology & archaeology.

I thought that the Native art exhibit did an incredible job covering topics like colonialism and theft of cultural artifacts, showcasing Native art vs otherizing a people as an exhibit in a museum, and challenging the narrative of Native people and culture as being only historical entities with no place in the present.

While any natural history exhibit would be enjoyable for us, the exhibits at Burke were phenomenal! Each display essentially brought to life a concept of biology using taxidermied specimens where a textbook would have just a chart. It felt like I was looking at the neural networks in my brain brought to life! Honestly, we could have spent all day here.

After the museum, we headed down to the ferry to see the skyline from the water and to check out Bainbridge Island.

On the way back we stopped by Pike Place Market.

And then ended the day sipping tall boys on our roof!


August 19

Today was a relaxed day. Check-out of the hotel wasn’t until noon, our flight wasn’t until 2pm, and we had no plans other than getting to the airport. I was a bit worried about checking my bag because I had planned everything initially without needing to worry about weight or contents and if they lost my bag, I would really be out of luck on the train and would have quite a time trying to meet up with my bag again. Luckily it was well under 50 pounds, everything that couldn’t be carried-on fit perfectly into the checked bag, and it was one of the first bags at baggage claim! The flight itself was very smooth with no hiccups from taking a Lyft from the hotel, checking-in, flying, and picking up the bag.

Once in San Francisco, we hopped on BART (BART + the Seattle lightrail was at least some train time for the West Coast) and headed across to the East Bay. We met up with my friend Kathy and got dinner in Emeryville. Kathy actually took Amtrak home, so we went to check out the station for tomorrow. It is very small for a terminal stop on one of the most popular Amtrak routes, but the ticket person told us only 90 or so people are boarding tomorrow morning (the pretty parts aren’t until Colorado, so maybe people will join later rather than ride for 56 hours!).

This is our last night in a hotel before 2 segments of the trip, so we will be savoring mask-free sleeping in real beds and showers that include actual water!


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